Kisses from Kenya

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 23: Off the Market & On the Move It's birthday season, Vuyanzi is taking herself off the market again, and Democrats Abroad Kenya just hosted the first-ever Democrats Abroad AGM on the African continent. No big deal. Brendan explains why Nairobi was the right place to do it - and what it means to bring that kind of gathering to this city. In this episode: Opening...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 22: National Treasures & Hidden Transgressions Janet Jackson is a national treasure and this is not up for debate. From there: New Orleans gets a new mayor, Vuyanzi reckons with having outsourced her cooking entirely, Brendan emails a CEO with full Karen energy, and someone slept with a parliamentarian. It's that kind of episode. In this episode: Opening conversat...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 21: Still on the Charts, Still in the Streets Michael Jackson is back on the charts - 17 years after his death, breaking records ahead of his 30th Anniversary concert. Meanwhile Tanzania blocks an EU delegation from investigating election violence, and Brendan has a point about who gets policed and who doesn't that is worth sitting with. In this episode: Opening conve...

Send us Fan Mail Episode 20: Your Vote Matters - That's Why They Want to Take It Away! This one is personal. Brendan and Vuyanzi go deep on the Voting Rights Act - the gerrymandering, the protests, and what it means to watch voter suppression unfold when your parents and grandparents grew up in the segregated South. Some conversations you have because you have to. In this episode: Whose Ameri...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 19: Death, Data, and Desire This one starts somewhere tender. Vuyanzi opens up about losing her sister during Covid while she was in Kenya - the distance, the grief, and the network of people who showed up anyway. Brendan shares his own experience losing his uncle in 2021 after making the move. It's a conversation about what it means to grieve from far away, and it ea...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 18: Who Made These Rules? It opens with a debate about Uno that is somehow also a debate about culture, community, and who gets to make the rules. From there: Virginia redraws its districts and Black women take it across the finish line, abortion rights get enshrined, New York taxes the rich, and an LA teachers' strike that nearly happened reminds us what happens when...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 17: Helpless from Here This one starts mid-conversation - which is exactly how the best ones always do. Vuyanzi is sitting with the weight of having a client whose family is caught in Lebanon: the helplessness, the guilt, the strange expectation that life just carries on regardless. Brendan picks it up from there, and the conversation goes somewhere real before the news ev...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 16: Mixed Signals Things get personal this week. A kiss changes everything - or does it? Vuyanzi shares a moment that has her rethinking her whole approach to dating, which opens up a bigger and messier question: do you go looking for something serious, or do you wait for it to find you? Brendan and Vuyanzi do not agree, and it gets interesting. In this episode: The big de...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 15: War & Politics Sometimes you laugh because the alternative is crying. This week Brendan and Vuyanzi sit with the weight of global conflict, the strange experience of being American abroad when the world wants to talk about U.S. politics, and a PSA that needs to be said: please do not move to Kenya just because you heard it's cheap. In this episode: Opening - V...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 14: The Strength of Women... According to Who? From Brendan's VCR days watching The Color Purple to Vuyanzi being told she was "arguing" simply for using her voice - this episode gets into the gap between celebrating women's strength and actually letting women be strong. Two generations, two very different lenses, one conversation worth having. In this...

Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 13: When They Go Low, Do We REALLY Go High? Michelle Obama gave us the mantra. But in 2026, Brendan and Vuyanzi are asking the harder question: is going high actually costing us something? As the late Flint City Council Member Eric Mays put it rather memorably - when they go low, we go lower. Is he onto something? In this episode: Whose America Is It Anyway? - the queer co...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 16 Mar 2026  Kisses From Kenya EPISODE 7: Celebrations & Complications Christmas trees in 35-degree heat. Eggnog at the Equator. A goat that knows exactly what season it is. Vuyanzi and Brendan dig into what the holidays actually look like when you're far from where you started - the homesickness, the relief, the reinvention, and the complicated joy of celebr...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 23 Mar 2026  Kisses From Kenya EPISODE 8: Left, Right, Center In Kenya, the driver sits on the right, the traffic comes from the left, and nothing you learned at home quite prepares you. Vuyanzi and Brendan use that disorientation as the entry point into a bigger conversation: what happens when the political and cultural assumptions you built your life on get quietly,...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 30 Mar 2026  Kisses From Kenya EPISODE 9: Morals to Morale What's the difference between morals and morale - and why does living abroad make that question suddenly urgent? Brendan and Vuyanzi connect the FBI's fear-based collapse, press freedom under attack, and the cultural standards you didn't know you'd inherited until Kenya quietly rewrote them...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 6 Apr 2026  Kisses From Kenya EPISODE 10: Home Away from Home They're back. After a longer-than-planned break, Vuyanzi and Brendan return to find the news cycle hasn't waited for anyone - and neither has the question of what "home" actually means anymore. 2026 opens with a lot to catch up on and one big question at the centre of it all. In this epi...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 13 Apr 2026  Kisses From Kenya EPISODE 11: Has the Sky Fallen Before? Is what's happening in America truly unprecedented - or have we been here before? Vuyanzi and Brendan pull back the lens on patterns of injustice, the centering of whiteness in political outrage, and the question of who gets to be shocked. Fair warning: the cynicism is showing, and we're n...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 20 Apr 2026  Kisses From Kenya EPISODE 12: Is the Grass REALLY Greener? Is the grass actually greener on the other side - or does it just look that way from here? Brendan and Vuyanzi sit with the uncomfortable feeling that the right seems energised, emboldened, and utterly unbothered while everyone else scrambles to keep up. Plus: what a four-day work week in Pakistan...

Send us Fan Mail Two Americans living abroad explore race and queerness in global contexts, and what identity looks like when you move to East Africa. Welcome to Episode 1 of Kisses from Kenya, a Democrats Abroad Kenya social podcast exploring Blackness, queerness, culture, and life as Americans in Nairobi. In this first episode, hosts Vuyanzi (a Black American living in Kenya) and Brendan (a gay...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 6 Dec 2025  Kisses From Kenya What happens when two Americans living in Kenya realise that comfort and safety are not the same thing, and that identity does not travel neatly across borders? In this episode of Kisses from Kenya, we explore fear, freedom, and the contradictions of life abroad. In Episode 2, Brendan and Vuyanzi dive into what it means to navigate overla...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 8 Dec 2025  Kisses From Kenya What does it mean to vote for a country you no longer live in, and how does distance change your relationship to fear, safety, and home? In this episode of Kisses from Kenya, we talk about voting abroad, American democracy, and the emotional cost of returning to the United States. In Episode 3, Brendan and Vuyanzi unpack the realities of...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 18 Dec 2025  Kisses From Kenya How much of identity sits inside an accent, and what happens when you realise that English is not as universal as Americans imagine it to be? In this episode of Kisses from Kenya, we explore language, power, misunderstanding, and the price of an accent abroad. In Episode 4, Brendan and Vuyanzi get into the pleasures and pitfalls of speak...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 22 Dec 2025  Kisses From Kenya What does it mean to live abroad as an American without becoming a spokesperson, a saviour, or a walking symbol of U.S. power? In this episode of Kisses from Kenya, we explore representation, projection, and the uneasy mirror Americans hold up when they leave home. In Episode 5, Brendan and Vuyanzi dig into the idea of being seen as a mo...

Send us Fan Mail Premiered on 9 Mar 2026  Kisses From Kenya EPISODE 6: Global Erasures Visible and invisible at the same time - that's the reality of being an American in Kenya, a queer person in a Global South country, a diaspora voice in a conversation that keeps getting shaped by people who aren't in the room. Vuyanzi and Brendan get into who gets heard, who gets quoted, and who gets...